“We support the stable efforts by Egypt’s leadership in the fight against terrorism, including steps on normalizing the situation in Sinai. We are sure that the destruction of terrorists operating on both the peninsula and throughout Egypt reflects the interests of not only the Egyptians, but the residents of all countries in the region,” Shoigu said during a meeting of a joint Russian-Egyptian committee on military-technical cooperation.
Egypt plans to develop its cooperation with Russia in the fight against international terrorism, Egyptian Defense Minister Col.-Gen. Sedhi Sobhi Said Ahmed said Tuesday.
“We hope that our meeting today will reach its goals on the military level in order to strengthen mutual understanding toward terrorism that has become a threat to the region and the whole world,” Ahmed told Russian Defense Minister Gen. Sergei Shoigu in Cairo during a bilateral commission meeting on military and technical cooperation.
Ahmed said that the recent terrorist attacks in Paris “confirm the need for international cooperation in the fight against terrorism so that the world can rid itself of this evil and people could live in peace and harmony.”
Shoigu is on a two-day visit to Cairo, where he met with Egypt's president Abdel Fattah Sisi earlier in the day, discussing military cooperation, Middle East stability and countering terrorism. Russia values Egypt's role in regional security and stability, Shoigu told the president, according to Sisi's spokesman. Sisi responded positively to furthering cooperation with Russia.
On October 31, an Airbus A321 passenger aircraft operated by the Russian airline Kogalymavia crashed in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. All 224 people on board were killed. The crash is the largest civil aviation disaster in Russian history. Egypt's president Sisi personally inspected the A321 plane crash site on November 11.
